Return
by LMSharp
Summary: A series of chronological one-shots featuring LSF Exile Darden Leona. Mostly follows Into the Gray storyline, dialogue, and characterization. May in time replace Into the Gray. DardenxAtton, sometimes, but not DardenxAtton focused. These one-shots trace key points in Darden Leona's journey, moments something changed, all leading up to the refounding of the Jedi and following Revan.
1. I Force

**Disclaimer: I don't own it.**

I.

Force

Darden Leona was staring at the emergency hatch door on the administrative level of the Peragus II mining facility. It was sealed and locked, and Darden was just trying to decide what to do next, when a consciousness touched her mind. She jumped about a foot in the air as the rasping, dry voice of that dead old woman sounded in her head.

_"This is the exit…but it is sealed…strange. In my visions, it was open." _

It was as if the old woman—Kreia, Darden recalled—had raked her fingernails across the raw surface of Darden's brain. It hurt to hear her, hurt to have someone else touch her mind. Years. It had been years since she had felt the presence of another in such a way. How could Kreia…?

Her mind was weak after years of solitude. Her thoughts were clumsy, but nonetheless, she extended them back towards the morgue. _"Kreia? Kreia?" _There was no answer. Either she was not connecting, could not connect, or the cryptic woman was ignoring her.

She was alone in her head again, alone in her underwear among dozens of corpses and who knew how many sabotaged droids. Darden took three deep breaths. The thing now was to get out.

The next room contained another terminal. The security terminal, actually. It proved to be much more useful than the medical terminal. The facility had been sabotaged. The logs proved it. The trouble had started with the droids shortly after she had arrived. They had been causing the detonations in the ventilation tunnels, attacking the organics here. Someone had tampered with them. The security officer had suspected that guy Coorta and his buddies. There was a record of him chewing out the maintenance officer, who didn't seem to have a clue. Towards the end—maybe yesterday, or the day before—the security officer had gotten paranoid. He'd secured a stealth field generator in the next room in preparation for an escape and locked down the holding cells to protect someone, or to make sure that if he caught the culprit, they couldn't escape. That bit was unclear.

Darden stopped and tapped her fingers on the top of the terminal. On a hopeful hunch, she brought up the cameras and looked at the feed coming from the prison. Then she grinned as relief coursed through her. There was someone alive on this rock with her and the old woman. A man had been locked in an energy cell in the holding area. Because it had been locked down, he was safe. She couldn't make out his features very well, except to ascertain that he was tall, broad-shouldered, and dark-haired.

The relief abated a little as it occurred to Darden Leona that perhaps it wasn't a good thing that the only other person in the facility she knew for certain was alive was in prison. The man in the cell could be anyone. He could be one of Kreia's mysterious enemies, or one of the miners that had wanted to sell her off. She tried to access information on him from the terminal, tried to find out the prisoner's name, what he was in there for. But there was no record of the man in the computer. Darden considered for a moment, and then made up her mind.

It wasn't any good trying to get off Peragus II by herself with a feeble old woman that, according to all appearances and records, had been dead a quarter of an hour ago. Darden could play it safe and leave the maybe-criminal in the cells to starve, or she could take a risk that he'd be grateful enough to get out to help her to escape. Darden gripped her mining laser more tightly. The security officer had said in his log that the lock on the holding area wouldn't open until all rogue droids on the level had been dealt with. She'd have to 'disable' all of them.

She went to the door, and jumped again as Kreia touched her mind once more. This time, though, the old woman's mental 'voice' didn't hurt.

"_Be careful…there is much energy in the room beyond…yet it stems from nothing that lives."_

This time, Darden seized the tendril of thought, using it to guide her back to the consciousness that was its source. _"Kreia?" _she 'said' again. "_How the hell are you in my head?"_

She was sure the old woman could hear her. She felt her acknowledgement of Darden's presence on the other end of their mental link. Darden took in a breath, unable to entirely believe she was actually doing this, connecting to someone this way, after all these years.

Kreia didn't answer her question any more than she had answered her questions in the morgue. Instead, she said, _"Can you not sense them? Reach out…cast aside your sight, cast aside what you see, and instead, reach out with your perceptions…" _

Darden shook her head. She hadn't been able to do anything like that in years. Not since Malachor. Kreia was out of her mind. She was insensate to the universe, dead. Yet Darden reached out, she thought, in vain, and she gasped in pain when she felt them.

Kreia's satisfaction resounded inside her head, reverberating over the link. _"Ah…you can feel them…the droids you cannot perceive, but the small oscillations of energy…that you can feel…echoing outwards…" _

The sudden sensation was like the first breath of air slices like a knife through the lungs of one who has nearly drowned. It was like the light after the pitch darkness blinds. It was like the sound after the silence deafens. Darden Leona, Jedi Exile, fell to her knees in front of the door in the dead facility and wrapped her arms around herself.

It hurt, oh how it hurt, but she could sense it. The energy beyond the door vibrated faintly like a hum at the edge of hearing. Droids, Kreia said? But around them, around the station, she could feel more. Currents. Life. Most of what she felt were echoes of people and energy and things that had been. But even these small perceptions overwhelmed.

"_Ah—you hear it. It is faint…but it is there," _Kreia said in her head.

"_What's happening to me? What are you doing?" _

"_It is the Force you feel…it is not been so long as for you to forget it." _

Of course it was the Force! Darden knew that much. Knew it like she had never known anything in her life. Hadn't she grown up hearing its song through the cells of her body, off the stars of hundreds of systems, in the souls of trillions of beings across the galaxy, in animals, in plants, in light, in dark, in everything? She had walked in and with and through the Force, once. She had burned with it, and seen others burn with it. But for so long she'd been completely blind, deaf, unfeeling. _"It's been ten years. It hurts…feeling it again. I don't know…I'd forgotten what it felt like."_

"_Do not turn away from it. Listen…feel it echoing within you. Come—I shall guide you down the familiar paths—you will need it if we are to survive and escape this place."_

Darden opened herself to the Force then, greedily, like a starving woman before a feast. She took a deep breath in. She breathed out again. It was Kreia. It had to be. She hadn't seen another Jedi in ten years, much less felt or used the Force. The old woman had done something to her, and for the first time in a decade, she could hear the heartbeat of the universe, though it was still so faint. In this place of death, a dead woman had somehow breathed life back into her. Darden Leona smiled, and climbed to her feet. The pain was abating, and she could still feel the droids beyond the door. She clutched her mining laser and opened her bag to withdraw an ion grenade she'd found on a corpse. She would need it.

* * *

**A/N: So I still don't know whether I prefer this one-shot version of Darden's story or my novelization. So I figured I'd post both. One or both may go down at any time. I reserve that right. But here's what I have, and I would appreciate your input. **

**May the Force Be With You,**

**LMSharp **


	2. II Telos

**Disclaimer: Nope. Not mine. **

II.

Telos

Darden Leona wandered around Residential 081, hoping the TSF didn't come around and decide she had some nefarious purpose being out here at near 200 hours in the morning, local time. She really didn't. Not just now, though she probably was going to do some stuff they wouldn't like later today.

But it wasn't like she wanted to hurt anyone, wanted to hurt Telos. Quite the opposite, actually. It's just Telos—right now—it was being torn apart before it'd started by two visions of what it ought to be. For better or for worse Darden Leona had been given the power to decide, in these (hopefully) few days before she found a ship and flew away again, what Telos would become.

She could open the door to trade and profit- make this a world teeming with economic activity. A world of metal and machines and people driven by greed and desperation. There were worlds like that. Nar Shaddaa. Sleheyron. Even Coruscant, to some extent. Some would call such a world prosperous.

But Darden could also decide that Telos ought to be more what it had been. She had stopped here, once, right after her exile. She'd actually considered staying. There had been lots of them, here, people cast out by the Jedi—not exiles, just rejected students, but Darden had still felt an affinity to them. They'd found a meaning, and a purpose, in tending Telos' crops, or serving the Republic in other capacities. One of them, an amazing woman named Morgana, the wife of a Republic soldier, had walked with Darden underneath the clear sky and across the gentle, well-tended fields. She hadn't judged, hadn't recoiled in horror once Darden spoke her name. Instead, she had thanked her, and said she was sorry. That she knew that Darden had made the hard choice, and that she would now bear the sorrow and shame of it so that others could live and breathe freely. She had told Darden of a place she could find work if she was looking to stay, offered even to give Darden a place to sleep for a few months until she got her feet under her, with her and her son.

"My husband's away," she had said, and her face had turned sad and bitter for a moment before she forced a smile, "Gone to help the Republic again against Revan and Malak, but he would welcome you, I know. _You_ didn't turn, and it isn't your fault you can't fight with the Jedi. We both believe in second chances and new beginnings." She'd looked over the soft hills and Darden had heard the crash of the sea, in the distance. "I found mine here. You could find yours, too. The Force is kind here. Can you feel it?"

But Darden couldn't. Not then. She'd left the next day. And now she realized, walking through Residential 081, that Telos had been destroyed just a few months later. She wondered if Morgana had escaped, in the end. If her son had.

It really didn't matter, though. There were thousands like them that had escaped. Not all former Jedi apprentices. But decent, hardworking people that loved the Republic, that had loved their beautiful plains and hills and wide blue skies. The Ithorians here on Citadel were working to bring those back. But they would only achieve their aim with Darden's help.

If she listened through the Force, Darden could only just feel them, all around her here. The Telosians, that is. Their spirit, their hope, their fears as they slept in their apartments. She felt she owed it to them to do the best she possibly could for their broken world.

Darden turned back towards Block B, where her chance companions slept. They didn't get it. Though Kreia and Atton hated one another, hardly ever agreed on anything, they were agreed that Darden shouldn't waste her time here helping others and drawing attention to herself. Get what you need and get out, they thought. They'd said. Darden thought Atton, at least, might be a little sympathetic to what the Telosians had suffered, but he still thought Darden should help herself first, and then others.

He didn't understand that by helping others she did help herself, Darden thought. She had destroyed and destroyed and destroyed until she had carved her own soul out with her lightsaber. What did it matter that she had never fallen when at the end of the Wars she had still found herself so empty? She couldn't bring back the lives she had taken and the lives she had sacrificed. There was no restitution that could be made. For the longest time Darden had believed she would walk the worlds for the rest of her life, hollow, a ghost of a war criminal, unable to feel the Force, unable to connect to anyone or anything, and yet, unable also to lay down, give up, and die. She'd never had that in her, somehow. But now she was starting to feel the Force again. Kreia and Atton couldn't know that she'd had more human contact, built more relationships in the past week than she had in the last ten years. They couldn't know that now, looking around at Telos, at the people that needed her here, even pursued by the Sith and the Exchange and who knew who else, that for the first time Darden was seeing something like hope for a future, hope for her.

Not to atone, exactly. Never that. But to be sure that when her time was up and the tally was taken, the only thing to be said of her was how efficiently, how epically she had killed and destroyed. With every individual she helped, like the Sullistan outside the cantina yesterday, or Ramana today, she brought light back to the galaxy she had helped to darken. She insured someone else would walk free in their sun and live. Live, not die. Each time she aided another, it was like iron bands loosened around her chest, and air rushed to her lungs. She made a connection, and she could feel the Force more strongly.

Darden walked into the apartment and sat down on her bunk, lying back without taking off her clothes. The door shut and locked automatically behind her. Tomorrow she would go pick up the droid for the Ithorians at the docking bay. Kreia and Atton's soft, even breathing relaxed her. Three days ago it would have only made her anxious. Darden looked up at the darkened ceiling. She couldn't see the ninety-six tiles, but they were there. She felt out and faintly, faintly, felt Kreia and Atton's presence. Desperate, nervous, even in sleep, as indeed she was herself. But they were alive. And so was the planet. And for the first time in years, so was she. And if Darden had her say about it, they would all live better yet.


	3. III Conviction

**Disclaimer: If you want to know who came up with this stuff, check out the actual game. It's neat. **

III.

Conviction

It was a very strange place, this compound hidden beneath Telos' northern polar mesa. It was deserted, except for these Echani women, these guards, and their mysterious 'mistress'. The HK-50 droids had been right, for all Darden could tell. This had clearly been a planetary irrigation system once, like the one they had on Coruscant. But it was being put to a different use these days. Darden had seen combat training mats, statues, benches. The compound was set up like an imitation Jedi Academy. Rough, but serviceable. But there weren't any students. No one, except these silent silvery haired young women that glared at her with distrusting ice blue eyes.

Darden's two guards had led her to what seemed to have once been the old water reservoir. There was an enormous bridge over a still more enormous well. But when Darden set foot on the bridge, the Echani guards held back at the exit. Darden looked at them, but they merely gestured for her to continue. She was left to walk the bridge alone.

Darden started forward, feeling naked without her blaster and vibrosword, with her companions who knew where. The bridge was solid, but the well gaped like an abyss below her. It went down for miles. Darden thought she could see water still down in it, but it was so far down it might have just been darkness. Though the room was heated, as the rest of the compound, still Darden felt a chill that had nothing to do with her arctic location.

Her sense of foreboding was justified. She could see 'mistress' now, walking across the bridge from the other side to meet her. How appropriate to find Atris in the polar region, Darden thought. The former Jedi Master's curiously unlined face and blue eyes were as cold and hard as the ice that roofed her hiding place. Darden met her in the center of the bridge.

Atris regarded her for a moment, then spoke in a crisp, haughty voice. "I did not expect to see you again after the day of your sentencing. I thought you had taken the exile's path, wandering the galaxy. Yet you have returned—why?"

Darden understood two things at once. First, that the Ebon Hawk was undoubtedly here, just as Bao-Dur had suspected. Second, that Atris had stolen it for the sole purpose of arranging this meeting. She shook her head. "No," she said quietly, controlling herself with effort. "Your servants took me away from my friends. You tell me where they are first. Bao-Dur was hurt."

Atris blinked, her composure ruffled for just half a second. "Your concern is noted," she said. "Your friends have not been harmed. They have been detained for their safety. I find it…unusual that you are traveling with others again. I had thought you had forsaken the company of others after the war. Or is that why you are here?"

The arrogance of the assumption broke Darden's already fragile self-command. She snorted. "What, like I started traveling with others again and thought I'd look you up? Atris, you know damn well why I'm here and it wasn't because I wanted to see you."

Atris' eyes hardened, if possible, even more, and when she spoke her voice had cooled another fifty degrees or so. "Yet here you are. Perhaps you do not know yourself as well as you think. Regardless, your arrival here begs an explanation. Have you come to face the judgment of the Council, as you did so many years ago? Are you finally willing to admit that we were right to cast you out?"

Darden stared at Atris, completely bewildered, and getting angrier by the second. "Have you been waiting to hear it?" she asked, after a moment. "You won't get to. There is no Council to face, not anymore. And you were wrong to cast me out then; you were wrong to condemn me for going to war. The Council wanted to assess the threat while people were dying by the millions."

Atris' pale cheeks flushed with the faintest red. "So you said, so long ago. I didn't believe it then and I don't believe it now. You sought adventure. You hungered for battle. You could not wait to follow Revan to war. The Jedi Order asked only for time to examine the Mandalorian threat. They urged caution, patience. You defied them. So when you returned you were brought before us. You were a Jedi no longer, and so you were exiled."

She repeated the words like a mantra, sounding like she had said them to herself alone in the cold hundreds of times before. Darden was infuriated by the judgment without understanding, the icy anger. "What is a Jedi Knight?" she demanded. "We were supposed to teach, we were supposed to protect. It's easy for you to sit down here and condemn me, easy for you to say I lusted for battle. You weren't there, Atris! You didn't see it, and you didn't live it. The war was hell and I hated every minute of it. Every second! I went to protect the defenseless. And on that day when I returned to answer for it you wanted me imprisoned or worse."

The ice sculpture cracked, just a little, and Darden saw that Atris' anger had not dimmed over ten years. "There was much about that day that is difficult to forget," she said, reaching into her white robes with a curious, hard smile. "Your words. Your defiance. And when you stabbed your lightsaber into the center stone." Her voice grew louder, more ringing. "I have kept it, so I would never forget!"

Atris activated the lightsaber she had drawn forth from her robes. Darden's own silvery blue blade slid out. Darden looked at it, and all the pain and sorrow of the Mandalorian Wars came back, both what she had seen done and what she had done herself. All the injustice and anger she had felt when she had tried to do the right thing afterwards and the Jedi Council had met her gesture of reconciliation only with rejection. And _Atris_ held _her_ lightsaber now!

"It wasn't your right!" Darden cried, clenching her fists.

Atris was enjoying her pain. "I have always kept it," she said quietly, looking down her nose at Darden. "As a reminder of what can happen when your passions dictate your actions. I have kept it, so I would never forget your arrogance or your insult to the Order."

Atris' eyes glittered strangely, and all at once things realigned in Darden Leona's head. Darden knew why she had done what she had done, and she realized for the first time that she would do it again if it meant protecting others, fighting for what was right. Darden Leona stood before Master Atris, formerly of the Jedi Council that had exiled her, and realized that though she, Darden, had destroyed worlds, condemned hundreds and thousands of her own soldiers to death, though she would always carry that guilt with her and might never again be assured of sleeping soundly, _she_ had not carried a memento of her anger all of these years. When she had been exiled, she had not taken revenge. And here and now, she was not the one standing on this bridge with hatred and delusion in her mind and heart. And suddenly, Darden Leona, Jedi Exile, wasn't angry with Atris anymore. She only felt sorry for her.

So when she answered Atris, she did so quietly. "It isn't arrogance to defy what is wrong. I didn't insult the Order, only what the Order had become. That day, Atris, I was the only one that retained enough respect for the Jedi to return. To be exiled, after that—"

At this, Atris nodded, and her expression softened fractionally. "I am not unsympathetic to your feelings," she said. "It must have been difficult for you to leave the Order. But you gave the Council no other choice. You gave me no other choice."

Darden heard the emphasis on the personal. She heard the delusion Atris had been living under all these years, and sensed how it had been tormenting her, if only faintly. She gestured at the lightsaber Atris still held unsheathed. "With that lightsaber," she said, still in a quiet, even tone, "With that lightsaber, I defended the weak and upheld the right."

Atris' eyes flashed. "Your choice was to meet the aggression of the Mandalorians with more aggression!" she retorted. "That is not the Jedi way!"

Darden held her ground. "The Jedi were abandoning their sworn responsibilities. I and the others that went to war saved the Republic. We kept worlds safe." With every word she spoke she grew more certain of herself and the choice she had made, and more certain that Atris was the one that was lost.

"There was no guarantee that marching to war would have saved the Outer Rim," Atris argued. "In fact, quite the opposite."

"You're right that there was no guarantee we would win when we left," Darden replied. "We almost didn't. Believe me. I know." She held Atris with her gaze, reminding the older, taller woman who had done the fighting, who had made the choices that the Jedi Council had refused to. "But if we had not gone, the Mandalorians would rule the Republic. What would a government under them have looked like, Atris? With their contempt for the weak and everlasting desire to test themselves against oblivion?"

Atris stepped back unconsciously. "Perhaps the Mandalorians would have won the physical victory," she conceded grudgingly. Hastily she added, "But the real victory lay in th—"

Darden cut her off. "—In the triumph of pacifism? In surrender to enslavement and or obliteration? In tacit compliance in the massacre of worlds?"

"Do not twist my words!" Atris snapped. "A physical victory is not the only victory. Or the only loss."

Darden shook her head. "You can only say that because the Republic still stands. But what if it had fallen, Atris? What then?"

She was getting to her. Atris had taken yet another step back. Her cheeks were definitely red now. "You do not kno—"

Darden interrupted again, pressing her advantage. "No. I will not hear the arguments you have reiterated to yourself over and over again these ten years, Atris. Instead, tell me this: If the Mandalorians had won, would the Council have deemed it appropriate to fight then? Or would they have merely sat in their towers and meditated on the ramifications of a Mandalorian-run galaxy?"

Atris halfway raised Darden's old lightsaber. "How dare you!" she cried passionately. "The Mandalorian Wars should have been your grave and Malachor V is where you should have died!"

Darden felt a surge of satisfaction. She stood very still as the sound of Atris' hateful words echoed through the reservoir chamber. She saw Atris shudder, but the Jedi Master held her ground. Slowly, Darden nodded. "I agree with you," she said, very quietly. "I wish I had died at Malachor every day. But I didn't think that _you_ would say so. I didn't think a _proper_ Jedi would say so. Atris, it's been ten years. I know why I still see Malachor every night in my nightmares. I know why I wake up sobbing in the dark. I know my own solitude, and I know my own anger at the injustice done to me when the Council cast me out—"

Atris' eyes flashed with triumph, and she opened her mouth, but Darden had anticipated her. She held up a hand. "Don't you dare to tell me anger is of the Dark Side while you stand there with my lightsaber in my hand throwing ten year old accusations at me!" she cried. Then she caught her breath, regained her control. "I'm an Exile," she said more quietly. "You and the Council made sure of that. I don't follow the Jedi way anymore. There isn't a Jedi way to follow now, anyway. But I also know that I'm not the only one standing here that hasn't come to terms with what happened then."

She stepped forward purposefully. "Tell me, how long have you hidden here? Hating me for what I did, fearing me, and fearing your own confusion?"

Atris took a third step back and shut off the lightsaber. She thrust it back into her robe. "You see shadows where there are none and hate where there is none," she said quietly, regaining her own control. But she wouldn't meet Darden's eyes. "You are blind, as always."

Darden took another step towards her. "Somehow, I don't think so, Atris."

Atris held up a hand. "Enough! I tire of—fighting with you. You lust for war and you always will. And you have succeeded in distracting me from my original questions. If you have not seen the truth, have not repented, then why have you come here?"

Darden sighed, accepting the fact that Atris was not going to acknowledge the truth of what she was and what she felt today. "I didn't want to come here," she said wearily. "Unfortunately, someone stole my ship. If you give it back, I can leave."

Atris suddenly took on a more calculating expression. "Your ship? The _Ebon Hawk_? It is not your ship. Unless you are admitting to the destruction of the Peragus mining facility."

Darden folded her arms. "Are you admitting to stealing the _Ebon Hawk_?" she retorted, unruffled.

"The _Ebon Hawk_ is here," Atris conceded. "Its records and navicomputer are being dissected to determine what caused the destruction of the Peragus facility."

Darden snorted. The navicomputer of the _Ebon Hawk_ had been voice-locked by someone unknown before Darden had got the ship. The Peragus techs hadn't been able to break in. Atton and Darden hadn't been able to break in, despite their best efforts. If they hadn't already had the coordinates and hyperspace routes to Telos they wouldn't have been able to get this far. The locked navicomputer was one of a couple things that puzzled Darden about the ship, the other being the broken down HK droid in the storage compartment: an older model than the HK-50 units that had been chasing her around. She didn't mention the voice lock or the droid to Atris, though.

She only said, "Good luck with the navicomputer. You'll need it."

"We are having some trouble with the navicomputer," Atris admitted. "But I think with your cooperation—willing or otherwise—that will cease to be an obstacle." Her eyes glittered. "If it is your ship, perhaps I should be questioning you as to what happened, and why you destroyed the facility and murdered all the miners there."

Darden raised an eyebrow at Atris. She was so desperate to find Darden in the light in which she viewed her she had become illogical. "I cannot answer that question," Darden said calmly, "Because it presupposes things that never happened. All the miners were dead when the facility was destroyed, dead when I woke up in the med bay."

Atris put her hands upon her hips. "A facility of over one hundred and fifty personnel, all dead before you awakened?" she asked in cold disbelief. "A childish story to mask your crime. And with the facility destroyed, you think there is no way to confirm your story. But I will pry the truth from you, I promise you that."

Darden shrugged, refusing to give way to Atris even a little. "Actually, the truth of my story has already been confirmed, both by the TSF and by the Republic. Of course, you wouldn't know, hiding illegally down here. But if you asked them, I'm sure they could give you the evidence you're looking for." She dropped her arms then and straightened, holding Atris' gaze. "Except you don't want evidence of my innocence. Not really. The only evidence you want is that which you can use to convict me."

"You convict yourself with every word you speak," Atris snapped, reddening again. "You insist that I hold anger towards you, that I am eager to condemn, but all I seek is that the truth of your crimes be made known and just punishment be dealt."

"You cannot find a truth that doesn't exist," Darden said. Then she sighed, giving it up again. "The _Ebon Hawk_ isn't yours, Atris. Return it."

"Again, you insist that it is your ship," Atris said. "But it has had many owners, a fact of which I am sure you are aware. You have no claim over it. Even if you did, the destruction you have already caused demands that you be tried and punished for what you have done."

"The destruction of Peragus was an accident," Darden snapped, losing patience. "And it wasn't even _my_ accident."

Atris folded her own arms now. "Ah. An accident," she said, with terrible sarcasm. "Something beyond your control. You have not changed. Acting instead of thinking. Putting yourself before the galaxy, before the Jedi. Do you know what you have done?"

"I caused _nothing_," Darden answered her. "I _did_ nothing except be present. Telos is in jeopardy. The entire Republic reconstructive initiative is in jeopardy. I _know_. If I had a _ship_, I could go look for an alternative source of fuel for Citadel Station, among other things."

Atris had ceased to pretend to listen, though. Her wrath poured out of her unchecked. "Without fuel, Citadel Station cannot maintain its orbit. It will crash into the planet, and its destruction will echo across twenty other worlds. Telos was a test, to see if the Republic could mount a restoration effort on the Outer Rim. When it fails, they will not finance another. The other Rim Worlds devastated by the Sith will remain graveyard worlds, devoid of life. And that is the magnitude of your crime," she finished, glaring at Darden.

Darden leaned back on her right leg. "Wow," she said lazily. "It's almost as bad as the Jedi letting the Outer Rim die during the Mandalorian Wars."

Atris flushed again, but took in a breath. "So you still hold to your flawed convictions," she said tightly. "If you think to anger me, you are wrong. How is it that you are not content to confine your ruin to yourself, but you must spread it to others, wherever you go? Ruin yourself with your actions if you will, but when your actions bring harm to others, then you must answer for it."

"You are already angry," Darden said, rubbing her temples. "You have been angry for so long that you aren't listening to me. Atris. I did not destroy Peragus. The Sith did."

Atris stopped short in the middle of another retort. "The Sith?" she asked sharply. "What do you mean?"

Darden closed her eyes briefly, grateful that something had at last got through. "The Sith came for me on Peragus," she said. "They tried to kill me. I escaped on the _Ebon Hawk_. All the miners were already dead. The Sith pursued, and firing after me, hit and ignited the Peragus asteroid field. It was an accident, like I said. But not mine."

Atris looked at her very hard. Darden felt the former Master going over her words with the Force, assessing them for honesty. "You speak truly," Atris said at last, wonderingly. "You have encountered the Sith. I can feel the scars on you. And you encountered them on Peragus? But what would they want there? They can't have been looking for _you_."

Darden sighed. "Tell them that. They apparently didn't get the memo that 'I walk the exile's path'. They think I'm the last of the Jedi."

Atris' eyes narrowed. "If you were the best target they could find, the teachings of the Dark Side blind the Sith indeed. I am the last Jedi, not you. You betrayed our teachings, our beliefs…the very core of the Jedi Order. If these Sith attacked you, they will soon realize their mistake. And if you escaped…they most likely let you go, to see if you would lead them here."

Darden ignored the insults. She was starting to realize they were almost meaningless, coming from Atris. "I think they blew themselves up trying to kill me, actually," she said. Then she hesitated. "Well—I think the Sith Lord might have gotten away. Don't underestimate them, though, Atris. They fight differently than the Sith from the Jedi Civil War, I'm told, and that Sith Lord I met might not be the only one."

Atris sniffed. "Whatever force they bring to bear, it will matter not. If they face a true Jedi, they shall fall."

Darden held back a groan at the naiveté, the nonexistent grasp of strategy. She did pace in a tight little circle, though, unable to contain herself entirely. Unknown numbers of Sith, and this was the only Jedi in all the galaxy? "Look," she said impatiently, "Are you sure there aren't any survivors from the Civil War? Any Jedi other than you?"

Atris' face fell, and her eyes grew sad. "I said I was the last of the Jedi, exile, and I did not speak falsely," she said quietly. "There are others who were once Jedi, but no longer. They will not take action against this threat."

Darden nodded. Once. Twice. She kept pacing, to and fro across the width of the reservoir bridge. Once-Jedi were better than no Jedi. After all, she was an ex-Jedi and she wanted to do something about this. "We can work with that," she said to Atris. "If you have any idea, any whispers of where these once-Jedi are, or were, I can find them. Give me my ship back, and I can track them down. Change their minds."

Atris blinked. "You…you offer your aid?" she asked, and something in her voice made Darden stop her pacing and turn to face her again. "After turning your back on me…on the Council?" Atris paused, and the sudden vulnerability left her and her eyes hardened again. "The Jedi way is not something you embrace out of fear. The commitment is stronger than that, something you never seemed to understand."

Darden took a deep breath, ignoring the reference to the past, to the weird sense of personal betrayal and confusion Atris seemed to feel towards her. "This is not about me being afraid," she said, slowly and clearly. "This is about a threat that needs to be dealt with, and this is me, offering to help you."

She extended her tanned hand, scarred from vibroblade slice and mine fragments from the war, and held it out over the bridge. Atris hesitated, then took it in her own long white fingers. They shook hands. "If you help me it cannot be done from here," Atris said. "There are others in the galaxy who may help us against a Sith threat. If you can find them, gain their trust, perhaps our defenses shall be stronger for it. Take your ship, seek them out. If you find the, encourage them to gather on Dantooine. From there, we can call a council and see what may be done."

Darden bowed. It wasn't much to go on, but it was more than she had had before. "If there is anyone who can aid us, I will find them," she promised.

Atris gave a frosty nod. "Then I shall send you on your way," she said. She clapped her hands, and the two Echani guards at the entrance to the reservoir came forward with a third woman, the one that had hailed Darden and her companions upon their entrance into the compound.

"It is time for the exile to depart," she said. "She is free to walk about here. Her companions are to be released. See that the _Ebon Hawk _is supplied for her journey. Just—"she looked distastefully at Darden. "Get her away from _this_ place."

"We shall remove her, mistress," said the third woman. To Darden, she added, "Go with my sisters now."

Darden looked at her, curious. The other two guards looked exactly alike, from their straight noses to the spacing of their eyes to the way they carried themselves. But this one, the speaker, looked different. It was subtle. Her silvery hair was still cropped short, her eyes were still icy blue. She wore the same white uniform the others did and carried the same elegant electric spear. But her lips were just a little bit fuller. Her nose was just a little bit longer and her eyes just a little wider-set. She was a little shorter, a little fuller-figured than the others. And her expression was not so contemptuous, but more…curious.

Darden started back with the two Echani guards towards the main irrigation facility, but this last, this speaker, hung back on the bridge.


	4. IV Fool

**Disclaimer: Insert clever negative here. **

IV.

Fool

Darden didn't know what she was doing here in the cockpit. She didn't know what Atton was doing in the cockpit, either. She'd given him a chance to leave, not once, but twice. He wasn't bound to her like Kreia, didn't have history with her like Bao-Dur, wasn't reporting on her like the Echani girl. It was pretty clear that he was used to avoiding trouble, not flying right into it, and she had the impression he wasn't too fond of Jedi or the Republic. Circumstance, and circumstance only, had thrown them together, and Darden had always thought Atton would leave the very first opportunity he got.

But he kept surprising her that way. He'd talked a lot the first three days about leaving, but the minute they landed on Telos the first thing he'd done was try and distract an assassin that had been after her, all but throwing himself in front of the guy's blaster rifle. She'd suggested when they'd been released from house arrest that he find a job or catch a ship off-world, but he'd stayed. At the time, he'd said it was only temporary, until he'd helped her find the _Ebon Hawk_. He'd said he owed her for Peragus. But now they had the _Ebon Hawk_, and a couple impossible tasks, and Atton Rand was still here, flying the ship, now indefinitely, until things 'started going better for her', whenever _that _would be.

Darden didn't know what to think. Atton made her uncomfortable. It wasn't just the wandering eyes and the blatant innuendo. One could build up a resistance to that, and she was starting to. But she had a real effect on the man. He tried to keep her safe, wanted her approval and respect. He went into fights with her that she suspected he'd stay systems away from on his own. It was a lot more obvious than she thought Atton wanted it to be, and it was also terrifying.

It was all the more terrifying because she really didn't know anything about Atton. Not really. And after the revelations on Telos, she wasn't sure she wanted to. She'd noticed twice in their travels Atton's above-average skill in hand-to-hand combat, something weird about his moves. But it hadn't been until one of Atris' handmaidens had remarked upon what she had only vaguely suspected that she'd been sure. Sometime, someplace, Atton had been trained in the Echani forms of combat. She'd confronted him about it before they left Telos. And he'd gotten angry. Really, properly angry at her for the first time ever. And he hadn't told her anything except that he'd put two and two together and figured out who she was and what she'd done at last, and if he hadn't asked, it was because he trusted that if she ever wanted to tell him anything she would. He'd asked that she give him the same respect, and Darden had walked away from that conversation sure that Atton Rand had something in his past that he was ashamed of, something he wanted to hide from her.

He was still angry with her, it looked like, Darden thought, looking over at Atton's tight jaw. He was staring out into hyperspace, not saying a single word. Mad about the Echani training question, and mad about Atris' servant. He agreed with Kreia that the girl was here to spy, wasn't to be trusted. And Darden had defied them both and welcomed her.

Darden shifted in the co-pilot's seat. "Well?" Atton said finally. "Are we just going to drift around in hyperspace forever until we starve to death, or you got somewhere you need to be, sweetheart?"

"Onderon," Darden said. Teethree had found records of four Jedi Masters on four worlds—actually the four Masters, other than Atris, that had been present at Darden's exile. The worlds were Dantooine, Nar Shaddaa, Onderon, and Korriban; the Masters Vrook, Zez-Kai Ell, Kavar, and Vash, respectively. On these four worlds Darden would find what remained of the Jedi and call them to Council against the Sith, or she would find that they had perished or vanished beyond hope of trace from the galaxy.

Atton looked at her, then away. "Onderon, huh?" he said. "Why there first?"

Darden couldn't help pulling out her blaster and components from her pack, couldn't help starting to fiddle with them. It was a nervous habit. She knew that. But it helped to keep her calm. "I knew Kavar well," she told Atton. "He was actually my Master, for a time. Afterwards he was still my friend. I figured if we're looking for ex-Jedi who don't want to be found, it might be best to start with someone that might not mind a visit from me too much. Besides, from what we heard on Telos, trouble's brewing on Onderon. In a few months we might not be able to get in at all."

"Yeah, okay," Atton said, starting to push in buttons. "Good thing I have the coordinates from that trash bucket of yours, with the busted navicomputer. Hope they're good, or we might be lost a long time. Or come out of hyperspace in the middle of a moon. Could take us anywhere from a week or a month to get there."

"Fine. We're stocked for two months."

Atton finished plugging in the coordinates and started changing course. "Was there something else?" he said presently. "If you wanted to interrogate me some more, General, I think there were some childhood details you hadn't pried out of me just yet."

His tone was tight, defensive. Darden sighed and put down her blaster parts, swiveling her chair to face him. "Atton," she said. "Look. I don't want any dirty little secrets, though you've figured out mine."

Atton snorted. "Some secret."

"Yes, well. I blew up a planet and thousands of people. Mandalorians and my own forces," Darden said, unable to quite keep the bitterness out of her tone, even after deciding again that she had done the right thing. The scars of Malachor would never fully heal. "No matter how much I'd like to forget it, that sort of thing tends to follow a person around. I don't like to talk about it, so it's not fair for me to ask you to talk about something you might not like to remember, either."

Atton steered the _Ebon Hawk_ into a slightly different route. Darden felt the galaxy shift around them. But he was listening. His muscles were taut with tension, but his mouth had relaxed just a fraction.

"I know the kind of people that get that sort of training, Atton," Darden said, carefully. "I saw it happen. But I also got to the bottom of what happened on Peragus. It would've been hard to put an elite intelligence operative in deep cover in a force cage in a facility already destroyed by an HK-50 droid. And if you were an assassin, you would've killed me already. You've had plenty of opportunity."

Strangely, this last made Atton relax completely. "Yeah, I have," he said firmly.

"Exactly. You're helping me, not hurting me. So whatever you were, it doesn't matter, okay? I just figured if you _do_ have any special combat training it could be a real asset." She shrugged.

And Atton finally, finally smiled. Awkwardly, but it was a definite smile. "Well, hey, thanks. But you've got the wrong guy. I can fly your ship. I'm good at shooting people, cracking wise, and pretending to know how to fight with my hands."

Darden didn't believe him now any more than she had believed him on Telos, though Atton was a very, very good liar. When he had first denied his Echani training, he had exhibited none of the normal liar's tells. He'd held her gaze, kept his body relaxed, hadn't shifted or replied too slowly or quickly. The only thing that had given him away was a certain unusual harshness in his jocular reply. It wasn't until she had pressed that he had gotten angry. Now, looking at Atton, she knew he knew she didn't believe him. But she also knew not to press this time. "Echani combat or not, other hidden talents or not, you're an important part of this crew, and I'm glad you're here," she said.

And she was, too, even as Atton's ears reddened and he thanked her again, smiling when she looked away. Despite the fact that Atton might have, probably did have, a dark past, despite his obvious attraction to her and occasional callousness, she liked having Atton around. He wasn't Kreia, semi-Sith and cryptic. He wasn't Bao-Dur, whom she couldn't even look at without remembering the war and all that she had done for all that she actually liked him. Atton wasn't Jedi or Sith, and he wasn't connected at all with her past. Darden thought it might be stupid of her to trust him. It wasn't sensible, fair, or right to want him to stay. She couldn't give him what he wanted, and he was likely to get hurt staying with her, one way or another. So she was terrified, so she felt selfish, but she was glad he was here.

She sighed, and looked down at her hands. "Does it matter to you?" she said.

"What?" he asked.

"Me. Knowing who I was and what I did."

Atton wouldn't meet her gaze. He fiddled with the controls, though they were on course. "It kind of explains a lot, actually," he said.

Darden shook her head. "That's not what I asked. You know what I mean."

Atton was silent a moment, but then he swiveled to face her and smiled. "Nah. You're still that crazy Jedi that walks around in her underwear to me. You haven't done that lately, by the way. Might be nice to give it another go. Remember the good old days when droids were shooting at us on Peragus and we weren't on a wild gizka chase for Jedi around the galaxy."

He winked at her. Darden looked at him. It was a lie, of course. But it was an Atton lie. The wink, the quick up-and-down scan of her body, the inappropriate suggestions, he was telling her in his way that even if he thought about her differently now, however he thought about her differently, he was going to treat her the same way he had before. And oddly, Darden found that reassuring. She leaned back and crossed her arms. "Yeah, I think I'll give the underwear a pass."

A beat too late she realized she'd left herself wide open, but Atton was already taking advantage of the possible misinterpretation. He raised an eyebrow at her. "Really? You going commando under there, General?"

Darden's face was on fire. She glared at him. "I ought to slap you sometimes," she muttered.

Atton grinned. "But you haven't," he pointed out. "Hey, does that mean I've got a shot?"

"Through the head someday, maybe," Darden retorted.

"Ooh, I'm scared," he mocked her. "Beware, exile! Your feelings reveal you! Anger is of the Dark Side, Darden Leona."

"So is passion, or so we're told," Darden replied seriously. Atton's grin slid right off his face, and he went still. "Atton," Darden said, "We really do need to talk about..." She looked at him, but for some reason just couldn't say it. Couldn't tell him he was just heading for trouble. "The Handmaiden," she said, instead.

He looked away, disappointed, and Darden felt she had been cowardly. "What about the spy?" he said in a flat voice.

Darden sighed. "Try to be nice? She works for Atris, but that's not her fault. And plus, it's more Atris' style to order a handmaiden with us than to have one stow away. I can't help thinking she may be here on her own initiative."

Atton turned back to her. "You think she's not reporting to that Jedi schutta that hates your guts?"

"No," Darden admitted. "I think she almost certainly is. But I also think she's doing it to make up for running away." She had an instinct about the last of the Handmaidens, this thoughtful, serious Echani girl whose sisters (half-sisters?) hated her. This one handmaiden among all seven that seemed to doubt Atris' word on Darden's character. This girl who begged her so passionately for knowledge of what the Force felt like.

"Well, she seemed nice enough on Telos," Atton admitted grudgingly. "Though that battle obsession she's got is pretty weird. And just killing her…" he hesitated, and looked at her. "I don't know. It'd just be wrong, wouldn't it?"

Darden looked back at Atton. She wondered if he would have said that when they'd first met. She smiled. "Yeah. I think so, too. But it's not enough not to kill her. If we treat her like an enemy there is no possible way she won't be one, understand? But if we treat her like we're grateful for her help, like we want to help her too, be her friend—"

"—I get you," Atton said, nodding. "All right. Play nice with the spy. You got it."

Darden was grateful he understood. "Thanks, Atton," she said. "And thanks for worrying, too. I know you were just looking out for me." She stopped, closed her eyes. _Dammit! _Atton liked to maintain he couldn't care less. She did _not_ want to start acknowledging she saw through it, did not want to start thanking him for attitudes she couldn't encourage. She opened her eyes, well aware she was blushing again, and despising herself. "I keep saying the wrong thing to you," she said angrily, halfway to herself. "I didn't mean—"

Atton cut her off with a laugh. "What? To imply that I might give a damn what happens to you? Sweetheart, do me a favor? Shut up. We're going to be spending a lot of time together. We can be friends, all right?"

Darden went still. She hadn't had a friend in—oh, ages. In the middle of all that was going on, it was an incredible gift. Not one she had looked for, especially from Atton. She felt a rush of gratitude, because she knew it was a dual concession on his part, giving her any claim on him at all, and then stopping at friendship and not pressing for more. "Are we?" she asked. "I'd like to be."

"Yeah," he said. "So don't sweat it." He was silent a moment. "Means you can hug me any time you want. Or—"

Darden supposed he couldn't help himself. She almost smiled. "Spacebrain, do me a favor?" she interrupted him before he got worse, mimicking his tone from before. "Shut up."

He laughed, taking the rejection with good grace. He hadn't really meant the come-on, and that was a change, too. "All right."

They fell into a silence much more companionable than that of ten minutes before. Darden looked over at the instruments panel then, and pulled out her pazaak deck from her pack at the base of her feet, shoving her blaster and components back in. "We on course for Onderon?"

"Yeah—we'll get there in about ten days."

Darden held up her pazaak deck and he grinned, drawing out his own deck from his pocket. "Can I interest you in—"

"No," Darden snapped, glaring at him. "Republic Senate Rules."

Atton shrugged. "You'll still lose," he said easily. "I'll deal."


End file.
